Amazon Reportedly Interested in TI's Mobile Chip Business

E-tail giant Amazon.com (NAS: AMZN) is reportedly interested in acquiring Texas Instruments' (NAS: TXN) mobile chip business, according to Israeli newspaper Calcalist. Negotiations are supposedly at an "advanced" stage, and any possible deal is expected to be worth billions of dollars, the newspaper says.

Any transaction of this nature would be a big move for Amazon toward vertical integration, as its Kindle Fire tablets all run on TI OMAP chips. It would also resemble Apple's own strategy of bringing processor design in-house as the iPhone maker did years ago in its iDevices. The other mobile gadget heavyweight Samsung also designs its own chips.

This follows TI's decision to exit the mobile sector with its chips, planning on rolling its OMAP product family into its embedded processor division while vowing to continue supporting current customers. You know what they say: One company's trash is another company's push into vertical integration.